Easter Sunday

Our Easter Sunday started around 5 AM this morning. Sunrise services, which is our family custom, starts early, so we have to start early. We arrived at Church to find most of the chairs for the service taken. So we were trapped in every good Lutheran’s worst nightmare. We had to sit in the front row.

About half way through the service the sun came up. Pastor was really involved in his sermon and almost missed the sunrise. So he paused his sermon and we all moved over the parking lot where we could watch the sun rise over Home Depot. OK, we were actually there to watch the sun rise. Home Depot just happens to be in our line of sight for the sunrise.

After services we attended the Easter Morning breakfast which is put on by the high school youth group. As we entered the fellowship hall I stopped to pay for our breakfast. The youth group was selling tickets for the breakfast for $5 each. A young man who is a classmate of my oldest daughter was manning the cash box. I don’t know who in the organization decided to let this kid handle the money. But the next 30 seconds were one of the most eye opening experiences of my life. I told the kid there were five of us for breakfast. He paused with a confused look on his face for a moment, then he briefly looked at his hands. Finally he grabbed his cell phone, called up the calculator and quickly multiplied five times five. Then he looked up with a triumphant look on his face and told me “25 dollars please.”

While trying to wrap my brain around the fact that this high school freshman whose mother is a public school teacher was incapable of multiplying five times five without a calculator I opened my wallet and discovered that I only had two 20s. This caused a moment of dread, because I assumed that if the kid couldn’t multiply five times five he certainly would not be able to accurately subtract 25 from 40. But in the interest of science a bravely handed him the two twenty dollar bills.

This time the look of confusion on his face disappeared quicker than it did with the multiplication problem. I assume because he remember that he had his trusty calculator ready. So he punched in a few numbers, dropped my cash into the box, briefly thumbed through the small pile of currency in the box then with a triumphant grin on his face proudly handed me my $5 change.

I was going to correct him, but I it suddenly occurred to me that in the past when they just asked for a donation without specifying a value I usually dropped $40 in the basket. So this way I was at least $5 ahead.

After I got to our table and told my family what had happened, my 10 year old twins were able to immediately figure out, in their heads, that he owed me $15 in change not $5. Finally my oldest daughter figured out why he probably only gave me $5. She figured that since he probably added the two twenties together in his head and then did the subtraction on the calculator he probably added twenty and twenty and got thirty.

I know this kid isn’t indicative of all public school kids, but watching him struggle with the simplest of math problems gave me just one more reason to be glad we are sending our kids to private school for grades K-8.

After breakfast we returned home and found Easter eggs scattered all over our back yard. We were very relieved to discover that unlike last year, this year we didn’t have a couple ravens gorging themselves on our Easter eggs.

After our kids searched high and low for Easter eggs we relaxed for a while. Most of the family napped while I watched Masters Golf coverage and mixed up a couple dozen deviled eggs to take to dinner.

About 1:30 PM we went out to my Dear Wife’s parent’s house for dinner. We visited for a while and then had ham, potato salad, cranberry waldorf salad and veggies for dinner.

We cut out visit short because the family wanted to get home before 5 PM to watch the Discovery Channel special Planet Earth in HD.

All in all it was a good day. But then I don’t recollect every having a bad Easter Day.